Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Iris, Fern and Sara

Iris

Iris, Fern and Sara the youngest of our Lavender Pekin Bantams are now well settled and perfectly at home with all the others. They were born at the end of November (23/24/25th to be exact) and it's been lovely to watch them develop.

A rare picture of the sisters all together. Their four brothers were sold for breeding at the Smallholders Sale last month.

Here's Iris and Fern joined by Prudence.

All the birds love hopping up on the chairs in their enclosure, I'm sat on the other one taking these pictures.

Fern

They are all this gorgeous lavender grey colour and SO soft to touch. I am in the process of getting the incubator warmed up and will be ready to pop 18 more eggs in tonight, so in 21 days time we should have some more chicks on the farm.

If you want to know how I tell them apart, the comb on the top of their heads varies slightly with each bird, and once you get to know them they all have very distinct personalities. Iris, Fern and Sara all still see me as their Mum and much to Caldwells horror come to sit on my knee and eat out of my hand in preference to fawning all over him!!

The birds in action!

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While the incubator warms, I have put these tomatoes in the Aga, to slowly cook. I have 6 more big bags of our homegrown tomatoes from last year still in the large chest freezer upstairs and now that I have some spare glass jars I can begin processing them all. I shouldn't have to buy tinned tomatoes at all this Summer.

10 comments:

Ours were 'rescued' from a bonfire one of our landlords farmhands was having on the farm after his Mum died last year. We also got a cupboard and a brand new rug. It would have been a shame to see them all go up in smoke.

Hi sue..o my gosh i have got 2 very excited little girls here..they absolutely love the chickens and can't believe how big they have grown..hubby thinks its funny i have a chicken named after me..i think its cute and so is she..i'm glad they see you as mum..my 2 are definately mummys little girls and love nothing more than to snuggle up on my knee...thanks for posting the film..fern is going to tell her teacher tomorrow bless her..thankslove to you and yourssara

The full compliment of names for the Lavender Pekin Bantams is - Caldwell the Cockerel, his wives Prudence, Little Lucy, Alice and Isabel and the 'new' girls Iris, Fern and Sara, named after some very special readers of this Blog (and their Mummy).

There are nineteen more eggs in the incubator as of this morning so I could be a 'mummy' again in 21 days time!!

This is my Blog, just me writing about our day to day life on a hillside in North Wales. Along with our dogs, Suky and Mavis, our cat Ginger .... who secretly thinks he's one of the canine gang ... and a roving band of egg laying chickens that live cheek by jowl with the local wildlife.

We grow our own fruit and vegetables, selling surplus plants and edibles at the gate. We sell the eggs the chickens lay, we reuse, recycle and rethink ... and life ticks over at a pace that suits us.

It is simply the wild and wacky ramblings of a 50 something townie turned country girl called Sue, who lost her heart to a sailor and started a new life in the country .... over nine years ago. On a path that took us from Cumbria to Oxfordshire, to Berkshire and then we found our home at the bottom of a wet and windy Welsh hillside by a busy main road.

Pull up a chair, grab a coffee and relax into a world of dogs, cats, chickens, the occasional grass munching sheep ... and some pretty delicious vegan foods ... oh did I mention that I don't actually eat the eggs!!

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I use it to chart the day by day, week by week, year by year goings on in mine and Lovely Hubby's life. In it I also express my views and opinions, and say what I do andoccasionally how I do it. I am hoping that this will prove to be a useful reminder for myself of how we did things, as we continue in our learning process.

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